The Rampage Labs Toolkit

Every tool we use to diagnose a stuck company. Thirty-two tools, seven steps, published free.

Nothing is held back. We give the method away because the method was never the hard part. The hard part is reading the evidence for what it says, not for what anyone hoped it would say. The patterns are already in your numbers. The work is seeing them without bias, and acting on what they show. That is what people hire us for. If you can do that yourself, this toolkit is enough, and we genuinely hope it helps.

Get the toolkitSee what is inside

How we diagnose

Almost any failure in how a company responds boils down to one of three patterns, or a combination of them.

Moving targets

Everyone believes they are aligned on what done means, but the expectations quietly shift and mostly go uncommunicated. Work never lands because what it must land on keeps moving.

Misplaced effort

Effort goes where it feels most important instead of where the value is. Everyone is genuinely working hard. The work just is not compounding.

Missing information

Decisions run on information that is old, incomplete, or softened on its way up. Problems feel sudden even though the information existed somewhere in the company.

The patterns cover the response. Whether the market and the money are there at all is checked separately on the way to the verdict. Every tool below exists to answer one question with evidence instead of opinion. Which pattern is the root, how deep does the fix go, and what do we do about it, in what order.

The seven steps

Step 1 · Intake, day 0 · 3 tools

Big Picture

What are we actually trying to achieve?

  • One-Paragraph Answer. The people accountable each write what the company is building and why, separately. The differences are the first finding.
  • Success/Failure Definition. One sentence each, agreed by the people who deliver them. The failure sentence matters more, because undefined failure means nothing is ever officially off track.
  • Baseline Vitals. The health numbers written down on day 0, so day 100 is measured against them instead of felt.

Open Big Picture

Step 2 · Days 1 to 4 · 5 tools

Reality

What actually happened?

  • Recurrence Ledger. Counts the problems that keep coming back, because a returning problem means a symptom is being treated while a cause survives underneath.
  • Deadline Replay. Rebuilds the last urgent deadline from the records before anyone tells the story from memory. One question in it carries more signal than anything else in the kit.
  • Padding Probe. Two private questions that reveal whether estimates are still information or have become negotiation.
  • Alignment Echo. Tests whether decisions made in meetings survive the meeting, with two privately written sentences per person.

Open Reality

Step 3 · By day 7 · 4 tools

Pattern

What is the root cause?

  • Decision-Conditions Test. Whether the big stalled decision has a real, reachable finish line, read from the shape of one answer.
  • Value-Source Audit. Whether the thing customers actually pay for is being fed or starved, read from behavior and twelve months of numbers.
  • Role-Deliverable Differential. A never-agreed role and a struggling person wear the same face. This tells them apart, and it tests the role's definition before any person is tested.
  • Diagnosis Bias Scan. Runs on whoever is doing the diagnosing, including us, before any conclusion is acted on.

Open Pattern

Step 4 · Days 5 to 8 · 6 tools

Depth

How deep does the fix go?

  • Convergence Test. Pairs of numbers that must agree, traced down to their shared root. The count of patches on the way down is the depth gauge.
  • Patch Validity Test. Is each standing quick fix still living inside the condition it was built for, or has that condition quietly expired?
  • Compounding Check. Is the mess growing faster than the patching, or is patching still keeping pace?
  • Leverage Layer. The shallowest level at which a fix stops the symptom coming back. That layer is the stop line, and it makes the cost question answerable.
  • Stability Test. Does each proposed move make the next change easier or harder?
  • Room Bias Scan. Before the call, each person names the distortion most likely pulling on them today. Naming reduces grip.

Open Depth

Step 5 · Days 8 and 9 · 6 tools

Call

What do we commit to?

  • Decision Decay Curve. A one-page picture of what waiting costs. Deferred calls do not get easier; eventually someone else makes them on worse terms.
  • Decision Contract. One page per hard decision, with success and failure agreed upfront and signed while everyone is calm.
  • Forecast Ledger. A dated record of who expected what, so the company stops arguing about the past and starts weighing written accuracy.
  • Runway Trace. How much time the company actually has, from trailing actuals or an honest band, on the record from day 0.
  • Market Reality. Whether the market can currently support the business at all, so a timing problem never gets misdiagnosed as an execution problem.
  • Savability Test. The honest answer to the biggest question, decided by hard conditions first. Four outcomes, keep going, change direction, wait, or wind down, and every outcome ships with its plan.

Open Call

Step 6 · Days 9 and 10 · 5 tools

Plan

In what order, by whom?

  • Gate-First Sequencing. Anything whose outcome could change other work is a gate, and gates run first no matter how small they look.
  • Contradiction Gate. Finds goal pairs that quietly cancel each other before they become one uncontrolled experiment.
  • Definiteness Scoring. Weights certainty over cheapness, because one hard, certain move beats five easy hopeful ones.
  • Trade-Off Price Tag. Every change to the plan gets a written price before it is accepted. Nothing is absorbed silently.
  • Leading-Indicator Shield. Pairs every stream of invisible deep work with a visible number that buys it patience.

Open Plan

Step 7 · Around days 40, 70 and 100 · 3 tools

Proof

Is it working?

  • Checkpoint Review. The plan faces its numbers at three set points, on agendas fixed on day 10 so they cannot be dodged later.
  • Baseline Re-Measure. Every baseline number re-run the same way and shown next to today's, including the flat ones, because omission is the misuse this tool exists to prevent.
  • Ledger Read-Back. The due forecasts read out next to what actually happened, because the gaps are the fastest way to learn what the plan got right.

Open Proof

At day 100 the question is not whether something launched. It is whether the numbers everyone agreed to moved. Nobody has to trust anybody's story, and that includes ours.

How we keep it honest

Every tool in the toolkit carries a working spec, held to a fixed standard. Public pages publish a curated subset: what the tool is for, the failure it catches, how to run it, how to read the result, how to run it well, where it breaks or gets weaponised, what would prove it wrong, and what we watch to know whether to revise it. Where a cutoff is our judgment rather than proven science, we say so in those notes, in plain words. Cost-to-run hours, internal citations, and the working log stay internal.

After every engagement, each tool used gets logged: did the reading hold up? Three failed checks retire or revise a tool. That working record stays internal, but nothing about the method is held back. The plain-words version of every tool is in the free walkthrough. What stays behind the curtain is bookkeeping, not knowledge.

After every engagement, each tool used gets logged against the reading it produced, and three failed checks retire or revise a tool.

Toolkit v1.0 · August 2026

The toolkit is versioned. We refine these tools with every engagement and we retire anything that stops holding up. When the toolkit changes, the version changes, the changelog says what moved and why, and every personal download link serves the newest bundle.

See the changelog

Everything here is enough to run a serious diagnosis on your own company. Three honest warnings from the field. The tools are easy and the posture is hard; every tool breaks if it is used to win an argument. The order matters; a plan built before the pattern is confirmed is a guess with a schedule. And the hardest tool in the kit is the Savability Test, precisely when it is yours, because reading your own company's evidence with no stake in the verdict is close to impossible from the inside.

That, more than any tool, is what people hire us for. The Turnaround Workshop is one sitting, about two hours, no preparation and no data needed. The 100-Day Turnaround is the full version of everything on this page, run by us, ending in the hard decisions committed with success and failure agreed upfront, and it can end four honest ways, keep going, change direction, wait, or wind down, each arriving with its plan.

Nothing is held back. We give the method away because the method was never the hard part. The hard part is reading the evidence for what it says, not for what anyone hoped it would say. The patterns are already in your numbers. The work is seeing them without bias, and acting on what they show. That is what people hire us for. If you can do that yourself, this toolkit is enough, and we genuinely hope it helps.

Get the complete toolkit

Twelve files. The full walkthrough, the thirty-two tool cards, the seven steps on one sheet, the turnaround map, the four decision charts, and the workshop worksheets. Enter your email and we send the download link.

We send the download link and, occasionally, what we learn in the field. The link is personal to this address and works for one year. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and we never share your address.